It's hot , your car should be cold

Last year my brothers car started making a terrible noise. He felt that he just made it home because the noise had gotten louder and louder. He could even smell and see smoke as he pulled into our driveway. Feeling lucky to have gotten home he parked the car. At this point we were not thinking anything about the auto A/C compressor.
There are a lot of things I do in life well but working on cars is not my area. For a whole year, yes a whole year, that car stayed parked thinking we were going to have an enormous repair bill.